The School Shooter Mod, Part 2
- Thread starter Extra Consideration
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Sorry, Jim. I think you're just trying too hard to be an apologist on behalf of this game. And as hard as you're trying, the folks behind School Shooter are equally not trying. And that's the problem.Extra Consideration said:
Making a game that is unapologetically about awful things (in whatever guise "awful" may take) is one thing. There's a certain amount of honesty to it, yes. Duke Nukem has that sort of "internal honesty." School Shooter does not.
What makes the difference? Credibility, for one. In a legendary "dick move" in music, John Cage premiered a work entitled 4'33" in 1952. It was basically four minutes and thirty-three seconds of a musician sitting silently on a stage. The idea behind it is that the sounds of the environment were the actual music, or so goes the claim. It's still a controversial piece in the discussion of what is/isn't music.
Now, let's say I pulled a stunt like that. Not even a blip on the radar. Why? For starters, Cage did it in the 1950's. But also, Cage composed a lot of great music before and after that. He demonstrated that he can do a lot of great stuff with music, and in doing so assured the public that the oddity of something like 4'33" was by choice.
See, an artist really only has two places in which to display mastery--mastery of the medium (technique within the medium), and mastery of the message (the ability to convey a "theme," in whatever form that might take). Cage established his credentials in the area of medium, and then set it aside for sake of message--but without the context created by his earlier demonstrations of mastery, it would just have been dismissed as a bullshit stunt.
The folks behind stuff like School Shooter aren't demonstrating anything in terms of technique. At the same time, they are openly stating that it's not supposed to have any message. So what are we left with to judge this as "good?" No mastery of the medium, no mastery of message. It's just a bullshit stunt with no deeper meaning.
I personaly don't narative or setting can stop a game from being good (of course they can make a good game better) as for me a game has to first and foremost play well and be enjoyable on that front. Great gameplay could negate a horrible narrative but not vice versa, if school shooter played incredibly I would consider it equal to the call of duty's/bioshocks/unreal tournament's of the gaming industry.
A survive-the-school-shooting-game? Yeah, I'm pretty sure someone did that. As a custom game in Halo 3.
It's amazing how much I find Jim easier to tolerate in an article discussing something intellectually than when he's on a video attempting to be funny. It's probably been the first time that I've read something by him that I've actually laughed at.
And assuming it wasn't Bob or James who brought out this new behaviour out of him, why does Jimquisition exist, again?
And assuming it wasn't Bob or James who brought out this new behaviour out of him, why does Jimquisition exist, again?
On the second page, Jim said this:
School Shooter is possibly the most offensive game ever made because it exists for only one reason- because the vile scumbag troll who is made it thinks it's cool to piss on the graves of the innocents who have died in school shootings. He's doesn't have a statement to make or any agenda other than offending people and making them angry. That's why the game itself is completely crap- because he didn't want to make a game at all, he just wanted to upset, offend and enrage people. This is NOT freedom of artistic expression. That fucker is a complete monster, the mod is indefensible and anyone who uniroincally tries is probably a complete asshole (but then again, Jim basically trades on his reputation as a complete asshole anyway, so no surprise there).
This is why I cannot even take him seriously on this topic. As I commented in response to their last debate on the topic, comparing Grand Theft Auto to School Shooter is like comparing Steven Colbert to Bill O'Reilly. If you can't see the difference between a gleefully over-the-top narrative fantasy of criminal life and a mindless, brutal, meaningless recreation of horrifying real-life events you're either mentally handicapped or a total sociopath and if it's Jim's opinion that School Shooter is no more offensive than other games, well, his opinion is wrong.Jim said:
School Shooter is possibly the most offensive game ever made because it exists for only one reason- because the vile scumbag troll who is made it thinks it's cool to piss on the graves of the innocents who have died in school shootings. He's doesn't have a statement to make or any agenda other than offending people and making them angry. That's why the game itself is completely crap- because he didn't want to make a game at all, he just wanted to upset, offend and enrage people. This is NOT freedom of artistic expression. That fucker is a complete monster, the mod is indefensible and anyone who uniroincally tries is probably a complete asshole (but then again, Jim basically trades on his reputation as a complete asshole anyway, so no surprise there).
